Reddit: The Sleeping Dragon of Social

You may think of Reddit as the weird cousin of social media that has nothing to do with businesses or marketing – or even a place where anti-social media people go to play. But this is simply not the case.

Yes, there are some pretty weird corners of Reddit, but there are some dark corners of Facebook and Instagram, too. The true power of Reddit lies in its ability to place you and your business front and center before your target audience, and entirely new audiences, in a personal, and responsive way.

Reaching a targeted audience

Reddit has threads and subthreads (subreddits) for just about any imaginable audience. If you have a raincoat for chinchillas or an app for deaf people, the chances are very high that you’ll be able to find that audience, full of people with an interest in, and knowledge of, that particular topic.

Reddit for chinchilla fans – /r/chinchilla/

Once you find your target groups, you’ll be able to glean an incredible amount of insight from these communities. You can delve deeper into the general profile of your target market, research common questions – you can even find product/service testers. Just make sure you understand the platform and users well enough to do it the right way.

Pro tip: Tailor your content to Reddit specifically. Redditors like quirky, fun, unique content that creates, and allows for, discussion. When communicating on Reddit, it’s different than on Facebook or Instagram, you need to take a more personal approach. You may be speaking to someone who has no idea what you do, what your brand is about, or what your product is. Whereas on Instagram or Facebook, they’re already following your journey.

Quick feedback on product/service

This cannot be emphasized enough – with eighty million unique visitors a day there is little to no possibility you won’t find a potential audience, or at least a good way to find inspiration, on Reddit. It really doesn’t matter how far you are into your brand, business, product development, or service journey, you can get an incredible amount of highly intelligent and helpful feedback when you find the thread or subreddit that addresses your small business queries.

Thinking of starting a brewery? Guaranteed you can find a subreddit of brewers’ brains to pick on where to begin, most popular brews, and so much more.

It’s generally quick and knowledgeable feedback, and also brings in opinions and ideas from people from many different backgrounds, which is a good thing.

Build a personal connection

Let’s be very blunt: Reddit is not the best place for you to promote sales or drill your company messages into subthreads. Do this, and Redditors will attack.

Reddit is a user-moderated platform with upvotes and downvotes that determine where a user’s content/replies is placed in a thread. For example, users can upvote a comment that they deem vital, or most relevant, in order for it to be the most readily viewed part of a thread. In that way, businesses can quickly determine what the most crucial topic their audience is interested in. But they can also downvote you into oblivion if you don’t play by the rules.

Reddit’s a very unique place for you to connect with a super niche audience and increase awareness. An example of a business that uses Reddit well is OnePlus, who often do AMA’s (Q&A) when they release a new product.

Because of the diverse, yet well segmented nature of Reddit, there’s almost no limit to the type of business that could use it.

Research

Regardless of where you are in your brand/business journey, Reddit can, at the very least, be an incredible source of information and inspiration. At the most? It could change your business, research and development, SEO, or more.

Using Reddit is relatively anonymous, so there’s little risk in dipping your toes and seeing what potential is in the Reddit pool for your brand. You’ll likely be pleasantly surprised, once you figure out how to navigate the system.